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Bird Causes Power Outage

A wayward bird ended up interrupting power to downtown Valley City Wednesday morning, said Valley City City Administrator David Schelkoph.
“We got the culprit in the office – a tweety bird,” Schelkoph said.

Businesses that lost power included the Times-Record and Dutton’s Valley Gallery of Photography.

Valley City electrical Superintendent Stan Hanson said Wednesday the the loss of power started with a circuit breaker outside the Ace Hardware store. “Somehow the bird got into the transformer and started an arc.”

Hanson said the result of the breaker operating was “it took out the whole north side of the city.” Hanson said power was down starting at about 10:30 a.m. and remained out for about 10 minutes.

“We were able to go on the spare transformer and use an alternate feed” to provide power in downtown Valley City. “”We’re feeding downtown from another direction” than power normally comes from, Hanson said.

Hanson said it is not yet known if the circuit breaker for the downtown substation can be repaired or if it must be replaced.

Hanson said he was downstairs in a bank building at the time power went out.

“We don’t expect any difficulties” resulting from using the alternate power feed, Hanson said.